Charlissa Sireech also is accused of repeatedly burning the younger boy with a curling iron, which she allegedly used to force him where she wanted him to go.

At a hearing Tuesday, Magistrate Brooke Wells ordered Sireech, 45, jailed and scheduled a detention hearing for Friday. Sireech is charged in a complaint filed by the U.S. Attorney's Office with two counts of assault resulting in serious bodily injury. She faces up to 10 years in prison on each count if convicted.

The case is being handled by federal prosecutors because the alleged crime occurred on the Uintah-Ouray Indian Reserva- tion.

The 4-year-old is still in a coma but slowing regaining consciousness, according to Carol Sisco, a spokeswoman for the Utah Division of Child and Family Services (DCFS).

She said the two boys and their 1-year-old sister will be sent to California to their other grandmother, with whom they used to live. Prosecutors are trying to piece together how the three younger children came into the custody of Sireech, who apparently had them for less than a month.

Their two older sisters, who had been living with Sireech in Fort Duchesne for a few years, are in tribal custody, but Ute officials have asked DCFS to find foster homes for them, Sisco said. The girls are 7 and 8 years old.

She said her agency was not involved in the case until the boys were brought to a hospital.

A sworn statement from an FBI agent says the 4-year-old was brought, unconscious, to Uintah Basin Medical Center on Aug. 30 by Sireech's live-in boyfriend. Doctors, who said the boy was bruised and had life-threatening head injuries, sent him by helicopter to Primary Children's Medical Center in Salt Lake City.

At the same time, the 3-year-old was at Uintah Basin with bruises and burn marks. Doctors recognized the boys' injuries as classic signs of abuse and immediately contacted police, the statement says.

The boyfriend initially said the 4-year-old passed out from dehydration but later said his girlfriend had beaten him until he was unconscious, the FBI statement says. He also said he had heard the boys screaming in the past while the woman beat them in another room, but that he always left to avoid witnessing the abuse.

In an interview with law-enforcement officers, Sireech said the boys bumped their foreheads while playing rough in the shower, but also said injuries occurred while she would "play fight

them. Later, she said they fell off their plastic cars outside.

She admitted using a hot curling iron to move the 3-year-old, hitting the boys with a wooden back scratcher and grabbing them by their ears.

A witness, who is not named in the FBI statement, said Sireech would get angry at the boys because they speak Spanish and "poop in their diapers." She described prior beatings of both boys, and said Aug. 30 that the woman threw the younger boy down on the floor and burned him with a "hot, hot" curling iron. The witness said Sireech also became angry with the older boy and threw him down on the floor three times.

Afterward, the witness told investigators, "he wouldn't wake up."

pmanson@sltrib.com